


Interlude: Sha'lain'a

by Cake and Pi (Tarrin)



Series: Aftermath [4]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 23:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11218440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarrin/pseuds/Cake%20and%20Pi
Summary: When her son is eight years old, he comes home with a black eye and a bloody lip and Sha’lain’a doesn’t know what she’s going to do with her boy.Heavily ties in withUntangleandConsequence.





	Interlude: Sha'lain'a

When her son is eight years old, he comes home with a black eye and a bloody lip and Sha’lain’a doesn’t know what she’s going to do with her boy. She patches him up, of course, and does her best with the eel he brought home with him. (They don’t keep it; it’s wild and she is not about to keep a wild creature in her own home.)

He comes home a week later with his other eye blackened. She folds her arms and looks at him and he just stands there, jaw set, one eye half healed and the other’s bruises still darkening, and she can’t tell if he’s just being stubborn or if he thinks he’s in trouble. Not that her boy isn’t stubborn. She wishes he were a little less so.

But he’s stubborn and wishing won’t change that, nor will he talk about what’s happening - Sha’lain’a isn’t stupid and neither is Calvin and they have their suspicions - so she teaches him how to punch properly and Calvin teaches him to block. She’s relieved a little when he stops coming home so injured; she’s more than a little aghast when Kaldur finally admits he’s been the one starting the fights but the other kids think hurting animals is fun and shouldn’t he be stopping them, mom?

She doesn’t have an answer for that and she’s ashamed because _of course_ he should and _absolutely not_ and she doesn’t know what to tell him because he’s _eight_ and that’s far too young for her child to be giving her this sort of headache. She thinks. Maybe. She definitely didn’t give her parents this sort of headache until she was ten.

She does give him double chores for a month because he didn’t tell her for so long. It gives her a chance, too, to talk with the other parents. To try and get them to bring their kids in check, so this entire thing will stop. Most of the parents care; a few don’t - “kids fight all the time” and “it’s just some dumb animals” and “it’s not like anyone died” - but even these are willing to make their kids stop, if not teach them better, in order to make Sha’lain’a go away.

When her son is ten, King Orin visits Shayeris, and Kaldur’s eyes go wide at at seeing him from even at a distance. “He’s a hero,” he whispers in her ear like it’s a secret. “I want to be one too.” Sha’lain’a bites her tongue on her opinions about a king who spends more time fighting threats to the surface world than looking after his people. Kaldur doesn’t need to hear them yet.

When he’s twelve, the military takes him from her for two years. Two years of only letters and the rare visit home. She knows better than Calvin that the image Kaldur’ahm’s letters paint is only what he wants them to see. She grew up in Shayeris, she’s been through the military too.

At fourteen he studies at the Conservatory of Sorcery; at least, for a little while. It feels like no time at all between when he starts his studies and when he drops out and becomes the king’s protégé instead. She hears the news second-hand initially - _what is her son even thinking_ \- and she’s glad for those few hours between hearing about that _ridiculous decision get your butt back into school_ and Kaldur getting home because he doesn’t need her yelling at him. And given the slight hesitance in his voice when telling her and Calvin, she thinks maybe Kaldur knows she doesn’t entirely approve. (Her own parents didn’t approve of everything she did as a child, even now as an adult, and she’s doing fine. So Kaldur should be fine too. He’ll be fine.) But her heart is in her throat more than it ever was when he was in the military, because at least the military has some oversight, at least then its combat training and which is the business end of a weapon and guard duty and for the most part the greatest danger is getting in trouble with the training masters. But Orin’s the king, and king’s don’t have oversight.

When he’s twenty-one, she gets home from shopping to find him sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me? About my birth father.” She sets down her purchases slowly. It’d be nice if just once, Kaldur would ask easy questions.

“I -” She pauses. Excuses run through her head - _you were too young; there was never a good time_ \- but those aren’t reasons. “I didn’t want to.”

“Aquaman thinks I’d _want_ to go to him. To _Black Manta_. How could he think that?” He rubs his face and then looks at her; his eye are red like he’s been crying. “Do you think that too?”

She sighs and sits in the chair next to him. “No, precious.” Her hands fold around his and squeeze hard. “No, I know you better than that. If Aquaman had been paying attention, he’d know you better than that. No, I didn’t tell you because I’m selfish. Because I like that you call Calvin dad and I didn’t want you, for even one second, to feel like you shouldn’t.”

He looks away from her and she squeezes his hands again. “Kal -”

“Tula’s dead.” She blinks at the change of topic, at the matter-of-factness of _what did he just say_. Then it sinks in and she pulls him to her. Her little boy, her precious little baby boy, never mind that he’s twenty-one and an adult. She holds him and rubs his back as he tells her what happened.

He’s going to leave right after, because he doesn’t want to _burden her_ like she’s not his mom and she hasn’t dealt with hard things before. She makes him supper and makes sure he eats - Calvin and Kaldur are alike in that they forget to eat when they’re upset - and puts him to bed. He’s gone come morning though, and she’s not even half-surprised to find him gone. He’s always preferred to deal with stuff on his own, even as kid. She wishes he wouldn’t.

She wishes a lot of things. She wishes that she’d told him about his parentage when he was still a kid. She wishes she and Calvin had done more than idly talk about moving to the surface and had actually moved. She wishes she had argued with him over dropping out of school instead of saying that she was sure he’d learn plenty from King Orin.

She wishes she wasn’t stuck in the crowd, holding Calvin’s hand as her son very deliberately doesn’t look at them while his deeds for the past several months are laid out, statement by damning statement. It doesn’t matter to the court the why of his actions. They only care that Black Manta’s son did them. They say they care that people died but if they did, if that was truly the point, they’d have Manta on trial instead.

She wants to yell at them, yell at the court with their disdainful faces and glaring eyes, that he’s _her son too_. That if they’re going to judge him for who he’s related to, they need to judge her and Calvin even harsher.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair and afterwards, after, the king has the nerve to come to her and tell her that he’s sorry. But sorry won’t bring her son back. _Sorry_ won’t change that her son’s twenty-two and he won’t ever be home again for his birthday. She won’t ever see him again. Won’t ever be able to hold him again.

“Sorry.” She spits back at him, shaking out her fist. Then she turns on her heel and leaves. It’s probably a good thing that only Calvin, Mera, and Garth were there, because otherwise she’d probably be arrested for punching the king in the face.


End file.
